A Hogmanay New Year's Eve party rekindles the 'old love' for Scotland

Journalists don’t join. They certainly don’t volunteer. They distrust society, which may explain why it distrusts them back. Their perfect mood is cynical, edgy and miserable.

Reporters are, in Nora Ephron’s memorable phrase, the wallflowers at the orgy — detached from the rest in order to protect their objectivity.

I have never really bought into that, siding with Hunter S. Thompson’s contention that, aside from race results and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as objective journalism. “The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms,” he said.

Yet I have never invested myself in the community. I coached soccer for years, but that was motivated by self-interest — I had to be there anyway and I didn’t want my son coached by someone who called it “soccer-ball.”

Then, earlier this year, I volunteered by mistake. It has been an inspiring experience.

I’m Scottish, in case you didn’t know. I can’t help it . A very great many Canadians have the same problem — one in six claim Scottish heritage, if the census is to be believed.

In the run-up to St. Patrick’s Day, while sitting in an out-of-the-box Irish pub, drinking green Guinness and lamenting the Paddywhackery of it all, a group of us debated why Scots culture is so much less conspicuous than that of our Celtic cousins. My theory is that the original Scots settlers were such successful colonialists that the dominant Canadian psyche is Scottish — lack of pretension about class, perseverance in a harsh climate, pragmatism, strong work ethic and an inferiority complex about a larger neighbour to the south.

But a revival is long overdue — a reminder to those five million people why they get a tingle in their heart when they think of Scotland.

The experience of ageing Caledonian societies suggests there is a need for a more contemporary expression of modern Scottish culture than an evening that appears to have leapt off the side of a shortbread tin.

The St. Paddy’s Day experience persuaded me something had to be done. A small group of us started talking about a New Year’s Eve party — a traditional Scottish Hogmanay such as Edinburgh has been hosting for years.

Since I knew the media and the money men, I was thrust into the role of spokesman and chief fundraiser. As the word got out, the group around the table became too big for the pub and we started meeting in the Parliament Hill office of another ex-patriate Scot, Senator Doug Finley — an office that used to belong to Sir John A. Macdonald himself.

The sense of mission became contagious and motivating, as I suspect it is for anyone who volunteers for a cause larger than their own personal enrichment or advancement. The people I’ve met through this venture are easily some of the most able, committed and interesting I’ve ever encountered — soldiers and stonemasons; musicians and policemen.

My own natural cynicism has given way to a passion that has likely made me a world-class bore on the subject — the beauty of dual nationality being I can now bore for Canada or Scotland.

It has been more work than I could ever have imagined — raising sponsorship money, promoting the event, signing up bands and dealing in all the minutia of hosting an event that may attract anywhere from 10 people to 10,000.

The old love for it endures, whatever the reason for living elsewhere

But here we are, four days before Ottawa has its first big New Year’s Eve party in a very long time — the TD Hogmanay Party at City Hall — a free concert headlined by Cape Breton’s Barra MacNeils.

It’s just the start in what we hope will be a more sustained attempt to rekindle the feeling that Scots-Canadian writer Frederick Niven captured when he said Scotland is “a kingdom of the mind … the old love for it endures, whatever the reason for living elsewhere.”

That’s the plan — though we are reminded, the best laid of those gang aft agley. But even if it does, it has been an enriching and intensely satisfying experience.

Lest anyone think this new-found happiness in the service of others has turned me soft, I’ve already penciled in Jan. 2 as the day when I revert to being cynical, edgy and miserable.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.